COMMERCIAL ROUTE

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1931, Page 8

COMMERCIAL ROUTE

i FIRST SECTION TO BE READY IN MARCH. I , }’• (Official Wireless). RUGBY, January 3. Imperial Airways announces that a distance of 2670 miles of the North Africa section of the London to Cape Town air route will be opened on March 5 with an inaugural flight from Cairo to Mwanza, Tanganyika Territory. The through flight from London to Mwanza, a distance of 5100 miles, will . take nine! days, against twenty-four days by surface transport. | The North Africa section between Cairo and Khartoum will be operated by the Armstrong-Siddeley Argosy machines, and Sport Calcutta flying boats will be used on the route to Kisumu and Mwanza along the Nile and over the African lakes. It is lipped that by May, 1931, the service over the full 8000 miles from London to Cape Town will be in operation, bringing London within eleven days of Cape Town. ' The Cairo-Cape air service is heralded by commercial air circles as an outstanding enterprise. Linking with the Indian air mail service, it will reduce the transit time between London and Cape Town to eleven days. The around organisation along the route, which measures 5700 miles, is being .developed rapidly. It involves the establishment of twenty-seven air stations with hangars, wireless, weather offices, staff quarters, and in some cases hotels. There are also thiity intermediate landing grounds, while a fleet of motor-boat tenders lias been secured for service on the Nile.